Of Rats and Hawks
by skyward.eyes
Summary: Until the end I never told him how much I liked the smell of his breath, or his imperfect nicotine-stained teeth.


**Of Rats and Hawks**

à Mara

Summary: Until the end I never told him how much I liked the scent of his breath, or his imperfect rows of teeth stained with nicotine.

Disclaimer: I just own the plot.

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><p><strong>Of Rats and Hawks<strong>

Shots holed the wooden floor.

My family didn't even have a chance to scream, no, they were silent, silent until the death. I recalled very well the metaphorical conversations about hawks and rats. In that moment I'd grown the hatred towards the Germans, an uncontrollable type of hatred. I heard his voice, Colonel Landa then imagined his arrogance. His presence was strong, daunting, as if he was some kind of wild spirit trying to occupy the entire room. It was certainly unfair for the kind Monsieur LaPadite. I'd watched him learning English, reading days and nights despite his weariness. A hard work a man like the Colonel would probably never understand: as he bathed in gold slaughtering Jews, he didn't even have to be afraid of learning languages, probably the process came naturally.

Silence pierced the skin, the ears. "Adieu," the Colonel announced. I crawled as fast as I could then exited through the small door. I pictured M. LaPadite's relieved face as I ran away, as I quitted my family for ever. I didn't even look back, I had no chance to picture their ruined bodies.

I just ran as if I was heading to the end of the world.

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><p>I met Marcel at a small coffee shop in Paris. He was smoking a filterless cigarette, talking about operating projectors to a friend behind the counter. The way he carried himself was easy, as if he had nothing to do with constant discriminations against him. We soon became friends, then lovers. Marcel told me to help him with his small cinema, Le Gamaar. It was three months later when I told him that I was on the run, that a German Colonel had eliminated my family. "Rest assured," he said, holding my hand, "I have a friend who could create for you a new identity."<p>

Emmanuelle. Witnessing her birth, her flight, I slowly lost Shosanna. Soon I would be a complete, real Emmanuelle, with Shosanna's desires at the bottom of the heart. Soon I would no longer be Shosanna. The only thing left about Shosanna was the small fire I had in my heart.

The fire to kill.

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><p>It wasn't until four years later that fate tangled the strings together. I met Friedrick Zoller, the private-turned-actor, who then led me to Goebbels then Colonel Landa.<p>

The meeting was held in an upper-class French restaurant, the type that someone like me had never imagined before of entering. Four years, zero change: his presence was strong, piercing the air, creating imaginary burning sensations on my skin. When he put his hand on my shoulder and told Friedrick to leave, my entire body was trembling. So this was the taste of reality, I thought, I met him again here and now.

I was probably destined to kill him. I had the fire.

"_Depuis longtemps j'ai gardé une question pour vous, Mademoiselle."_ his gaze was piercing, burning my skin again and again.

I stopped eating the strudel. My appetite that was never there had now turned into nothingness. I looked back at him. I even stopped smoking; I no longer could taste the unique aroma of the German cigarette he'd given me.

"_Mais, bon dieu, je ne me souviens pas cette question maintenant!" _He laughed, as if he had never scared me off with his gaze.

A weight dropped from my heart.

He left, leaving behind an elegant scent of lavender strangled in the thin air. I watched him as he left. I sobbed. Nobody noticed.

Was that strange that for a gap between seconds I wished his presence wouldn't leave me?

* * *

><p>That night I couldn't even bring myself to concentrate entirely into reading. I tried going to bed early, but all I did was lying on the bed hopelessly, gazing at the ceiling that was stripped of all realities.<p>

A knock in the door. Marcel.

"_Entre."_

He sat on the bed, caressing my shoulder, hair, he took my face to his chest. I loved the scent of tobacco on his old linen shirt, his flesh. He made me feel safe, as if I was sheltered from the violence of the world. Was it strange now that I thought of the Colonel's presence? With Marcel the feeling was like a glass of iced milk in the summer, but with the Colonel it was the sight of the golden sand under the sun in the Sahara. The sight would nail you in but still the sun would hurt your skin.

"_Qu'est-ce qui se passé?" _he asked. **("What happened?")**

"_Rien." _I said. Nothing.

"_Shosanna, tu peux me dire la vérité."_

**("Shosanna, you can tell me the truth.")**

I leaned closer. He wrapped his arms around me, as if to protect me.

"_C'est le Colonel, il sera ici la nuit prochaine pour examiner la location . Ça m'inquiete …" _**(That's the Colonel; he will be here tomorrow night to examine the location, that worries me.")**

"_Pourquoi c'est ça? Il déjà connu quelque chose sur toi?" _**("Why is that? He already knew anything about you?")**

I said nothing. I just sank myself even more into his embrace. Marcel would be the one to make the waves inside me neutral again.

I closed my eyes.

"_Non, Marcel, n'inquiete pas."_

I saw the Colonel's face like a quiet white flash in a dark room.

"_Même s'il avait connu tous, je vais bien."_

Even if he had already known everything, I'll be fine.

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><p>"<em>Pour la demoiselle…Un verre du lait."<em> He said it with such easiness, and the same voice repeated itself over and over in my head as I read at the office, at the restaurant, even at the small café by the street where the noises of cars and chatters should've been able to distract me. I saw his face again. I felt strange, a bit joyful perhaps, but this wasn't something I could describe easily. My hands were trembling; I'd smoked too much.

_Shosanna, ne fume pas trop,_ Marcel always warned me. He said it with gentleness, with such affection although even up to this time I still smoked, probably too much.

The day of the premier was closing in. I still felt the same. I still felt the chill running down my spine as that man called Hellstrom shoved me into his car. I still felt the chill as I… met the Colonel. Colonel Landa.

"If a rat was to walk in…" I recalled the voice I'd heard four years ago. I knew it very well. I knew it just the same.

There, in those strange moments of time I wished that I would be him when I grew up, leave alone the part about him being a hunter of my race. I used to dream of Paris, a Paris I'd never seen before, a dream which I used to think would never pass the low walls of the floorboards.

Then I heard the machine gun. Their blood on my face, hands, body and I ran… I ran…

He spared my life.

Years ago I was dreaming of the lights of Eiffel Tower. Now that I could always see it from such closeness, I still felt as if I was trapped in some kind of dream. Even at the Pont Neuf, where the dreams of ancient European architectures collided into such solidity, I wished I could've watched those lights with my family after the war had ended… The fate had spoken otherwise. I thought of their absence, I came to hate the Germans again, disgusted, but the same hatred calmed down as I toned down the thoughts. It had been four years now, and I had changed into a woman I was never before.

I had witness the birth of Emmanuelle.

_Au revoir, Shosanna._

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><p>I never lied to Marcel in the end, never. He knew when I slept with the Colonel, he didn't blame me. There was a long stretch of silence, but afterwards he treated me just fine. I understand, he said, or I am close to understanding it.<p>

He was certainly hurt.

I kept telling him that it wasn't my need. It was something else, something buried deep inside. To keep him away I had taste such rare closeness. Without being so close I would never be able to imagine a real distance between me and the Colonel.

Funny. The stiffness of my fingers as I touched the fine jacket the Colonel was wearing. I took it off, then his fine white blouse made of such expensive material. On the jacket there were emblems he'd got for killing the people of my race… the ones like my family, the unfortunate ones. I almost laughed as I traced his bare chest, it was almost unreal. It was too comical for the comprehension, but then what? All I thought was that I had to experience that closeness to be able to taste the real, not imaginary distance. I had to distant myself from the Colonel. Soon I would be the one who got him killed.

He slid my coat and dress down my shoulders hungrily. Then he kissed my neck, his lips were dry, his breath smelling of expensive tobacco, his skin of fine leather . I had never seen a man so elegant, so handsome, so perfectly born for sex. He was fifty, I twenty-three: I must've lost my senses somewhere down the fascinating Rue St. Germain.

When it finished, I laid next to him, feeling his warm flesh on mine, his bare legs… arms. Until the end I never told him how much I liked the scent of his breath, or his imperfect rows of teeth stained with nicotine. Never.

"_Vous êtes belle, Emmanuelle,"_ the Colonel whispered in my ears as he caressed my untangled hair.

I got up in a daze. I tied back my hair in a messy knot then looked at him with an understanding stare. From that moment he offered to buy me an apple strüdel he had already known that Emmanuelle was already very real for me, probably even too real.

"_Vous pouvez me tuer maintenant, ici, pourquoi pas?"_

**("You can kill me now, here, why not?")**

"_Car je préfère un petit peu du drama, pas ceux qu'ont rien pour la comprehénsion. Ça me donne une justification invalide, cet fait. J'ai confiance des justifications, pas les raisons."_

**("Because I prefer a bit of drama, not those that have nothing to do with the understanding. That gives me an invalid justification. I believe in the justifications, not the reasons.")**

I sat down at the edge of the bed, staring at the night sky. I gazed at it as if I would soon be in a different reality, inside that dense, starless blue.

"In the reasons there are justifications. Sometimes you'll have to deface the justifications, simplify them to form the right reasons. Those right reasons would then lead you into doing or believing something."

"_ça veut dire…?"_ Still lying on the messy bed, he lit up a cigarette using a copper lighter then put it between his lips. Soon his hand was on my naked waist, caressing it as if I was made of wax.

"Too much justifications in the mind blinds the real eye to see the reasons. Remember the talk about hawks and rats? In the end that's the reason, regardless how useless, that moves a person. If you haven't killed me just yet, that means that you haven't yet found a reason to do it… Let alone the call of duty—you never struck me as someone who likes to be inside an order. _You_ are your own order, _n'est-ce pas?_"

He smiled.

Silence.

We made love again for the last time that night, probably last time in my life. I knew with that experience of closeness I could now envision and develop a real distance between me and him. A real distance, a real gap with zero fiction or imagination.

I bit his lips. Red, thick blood gushing out of the pink flesh. I tasted the warm blood; coffee and nicotine.

I still had the fire to kill.

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><p><strong>I've always liked the characterizations of Colonel Landa and Shosanna. Both were very intelligent, deep, with their own kinds of arrogance.<strong>

**My hope is that I'd captured both characteristics well enough here. :-)**


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